Costume Ball

SHeDAISY try on a few new faces

Published: Nov 21, 2000

Story by Robyn Flans

It's 8 a.m., and SHeDAISY's Kassidy Osborn has already spent two hours in the makeup trailer, being transformed from pretty, perky singer to kung-fu master.

Kassidy, along with her sisters Kelsi and Kristyn, are playing a full dizzying cast of characters in their new video, "Lucky 4 You (Tonight I'm Just Me)." This means a lot of time and trouble spent on makeup and costumes, such as the long, slender mustache and martial-arts outfit that render Kassidy nearly unrecognizable.

Once her getup is complete, Kassidy walks into the former diner being used for the Los Angeles shoot. Kelsi soon joins her, made up as a waitress with a heavy beehive wig. "I keep hitting the lamps," Kelsi laughs, lisping through her prosthetic teeth. "And I've forgotten to duck in doorways a few times."

As "Clemens," the waitress, Kelsi's skin is covered with fake age spots and wrinkles. "It's kind of scary to think I could look like this one day!" she exclaims. Kelsi, too, has spent two hours in a makeup chair this morning, with three artists working on her simultaneously.

All that work has paid off - even the siblings' parents, arriving on the set to watch the filming, are almost fooled. "It really was shocking," exclaims mom Robyn Osborn. "I recognized Kassidy and Kristyn, but I really didn't know that was Kelsi."

Before long, shooting has begun, and kung-fu master Kassidy is atop the table throwing some quick dangerous-looking moves. "They were mostly Tae-Bo," she explains later with a chuckle, hoping viewers don't notice the difference between the two martial arts.

"You have to go with what you know. I thought they'd have a double so it would look like I knew what I was doing, but no."

In the video's madcap plot, the diner's cook has spiked the food with a love potion, so when filming resumes, kung-fu Kassidy has to grab waitress Kelsi and plant a kiss on her.

"I said, 'Let's make sure we get this in one take,'" Kelsi recalls, wiping her sister's pink lipstick off her face. "It turned out quick and easy - and it was okay, since she's my sister and she's playing the boy and I'm playing the girl. When we were little we would play Grease - she was John Travolta and I was Olivia Newton-John, and we would sing 'You're The One That I Want.' "

Kristyn enters the room sporting an outrageously stuffed bra as a '60s Barbie stewardess doll. "The falsies didn't work, because I don't have enough on my own," she chuckles. "So we had to rip open a pillow and just stuff."

Completing the outfit are hot-pink patent-leather boots. "Being used to dancing in big heels, these are not terrible," says Kristyn. "The color, though, is another story!" The song that started all this wackiness, "Lucky 4 You," is the fourth single from SHeDAISY's platinum debut album, THE WHOLE SHeBANG. "When I first heard it," says Kelsi, "I thought, 'This is a hit song!' The chorus is so singable, and everyone can relate to it."

Indeed, SHeDAISY fans of both sexes feel the song was written for them. "Women say, '[It's] making fun of the men,' " explains Kristyn. "And men say, 'No, [it's] making fun of all your mood swings and everything we go through as your significant others.' " "When I heard it, I thought, 'Can you imagine the video and how much fun it could be?' " remembers Kassidy. "We knew the video for this song had to be done right or not at all. Hopefully we won't offend anyone. It's all in fun."

The idea for having the girls play multiple characters came from "Learn To Fly," a video by the rock band Foo Fighters. "The first time we saw that video, we said, 'We've got to do something like that!' " Kristyn recalls.

The sisters told director Morgan Lawley they wanted to play all the parts themselves rather than hire actors, so Lawley assigned parts to each of them. "I don't know if I reminded her of a trampy stewardess, but that's one of the parts I got," Kristyn says with a laugh. "I'm also playing a Rocky Balboa kind of meat-truck driver with a broken nose and cleft chin, and a 300-pound woman. I'm excited about that costume, because after I put on all that weight I can give it right back!"

Kelsi gets to play a little girl, as well as a punk rocker. "I'll have a mohawk down the front and the rest of my head will be bald," she says, laughing. "I get to play very diverse characters!"

Tomorrow, as filming continues, Kassidy will portray a gangster's moll. But right now she's back in the makeup seat - becoming a bald butcher named Boris. "Boris is going to take about two hours," she says, "but I love watching this all come together."

Obscuring the girls' famously pretty faces fits right into their anything--goes approach.

"We don't want to take ourselves so seriously all the time, where we always have to look glamourous," says Kristyn. "We feel like we can look like idiots, and it's fun. We don't have a hangup about making fun of ourselves."

Despite the many hours of tedious work, the Osborn sisters agree the "Lucky 4 You" video will be worth the effort. Still, confesses Kristyn with a smile, "By six tonight, I'll be ready to take it all off. I'll definitely be ready for a shower!"